Attend a private school in heyward next year. He was just 14 years old. His death of course has devastated his family and the community. Police have identified a person of interest in the case. In the past five years 41 children under the age of 18 have been killed in oakland. Most were killed by guns. Another 670 kids have been wounded in shootings. I asked some students at Metwest High School in oakland this week to talk about the impact of violence on their lives. Heres what they had to say. Just tell me a little bit about davon. Davon he was a cool person. Could always make you laugh. If he was having a bad day he could cheer you up. How so . Yeah. He was funny . He was really funny, yeah. Tell some good jokes. Howd you know him . Went to school with him. So when you heard he was killed what went through your mind . It was sad. I wanted to know what happened, why they killed him. It just seemed completely random . Yeah. He was really into sports, you know. He liked playing football. A very positive person. I could see him in the league you know, guessing draftetting drafted. Oh, really . He played defensive end, right . Yeah. Corner. Oh he was a cornerback. From two of my friends were killed by gun violence. Recently . One was last summer and another was when i was in fourth grade. And this is just in oakland . Yeah, oakland. What were the circumstances . Well my first cousin was killed actually by his best friend, and my other cousin, he was killed i think in front of his grandmothers house. So i dont really know i dont you know, get into too much detail about it. Yeah. What effect does that have on you, on your family . It was very sad because they were both young. Its already sad when young black men die because its like it happens a lot. So just like just to know its in my family is like even worse because like my first cousin, he was 17, so he didnt even make 18. You know, so its like already known that young black men usually dont make it to live to 18. So it was sad he had to be part of that statistic. And my other cousin actually had a baby. So it was sad that his daughter is without a father. How many people do you know whove been shot or killed . I would have to start back from when i was 12. And id also have to start back with me being shot at 12. Police just kind of roll around the town looking for trouble because you know, they think theyre really paranoid of where i live because i live in the murder zone. They usually get afraid because we aint afraid to pop back at the cops but also i feel like its a back and forth thing with the police because the police kind of harass us and so we kind of get a guard up like you know what . You aint about to do it to me no more. We aint going to take it. You know, so i really feel for a lot of people thats locked up. I got a couple of homies thats locked up right now. My homee got four more months. I cant wait for him to get out. First thing im going to do is help him get a job because i know how hard it is because a lot of times people cant get a job because they got felonies. Why . Because for some reason the government just hands out felonies to black people like peanuts at an as game. I lose a lot of friends or Family Members. So i feel like violence in oakland has an effect on everybody, even if youre not losing somebody. Because then somebody who is targeted with the violence can grow up and then like attack your kids or Something Like that. Its like a neverending cycle. Its like everyone whether youre losing a Family Member or friend or yourself if youre a target of the violence. You never know because these are lives being lost in our communities. So when someones lost in the community, everyone suffers from it. Whether they realize it or not. How does it affect you . Personally whenever i hear about you know, young kids being gunned down it really hits home because i feel a lot of youth, we tend to close up in our bubbles and not really realize the outside world but then when Something Like this happens you know, an exclassmate of mine is killed, i realize like that could have been me so easily. So it really hits home. Hopefully i make it to 22, honestly. I dont know if i really see myself making it to 22 yet. Because i live like that. Ive only lived 17 years. I know i got more time ahead of me behind me if god want me to. But i dont know. Tomorrows not always promised where im from. So i try to make the best out of every day and i try to go forward with whatever i do. You know i try to go the farthest with whatever like everything. I try to go the hardest. I dont know. Just try to be me. So when you say you dont know if youll see 22 its the murder zone. People dont make it to 16 where im from. People a lot of my homeys drink before 21 because they dont know if theyre going to make it to 21. Thats just how the game go. Because when youre on your deathbed the last thing you want to really ask is huh, what if i did this. No im going to go experience it right now in case i dont make it to that age. Thats just how its if i make it to that age, hey, its good. I hope i go i know im going to see it if god want me to but you know, if i dont, what am i going to be remembered as . You know, what does my integrity stand for . And theyre going to remember me as an intelligent black male who can pontificate but also get real hood on somebody when they need to. If you were king and queen for a day and you could change one or two or three things about oakland to make life better what would you change . The guns. If i could. Take all the guns out of oakland. Do you think that would make the biggest difference . Yeah. Yeah. Put them guns away. Also jobs. Like give us some more jobs out here. Like thats one of the reasons why people be in the streets, because like they dont have nothing else to do. One of the biggest problems that i see is that schools arent fully equipped to give us all the tools that we need in life. So like you said theyre teaching us how to read how to write, how to do math, but theyre not teaching us or not all cools schools are teaching us how to get a job, how to be successful that we live up to these stereotypes people think of us. One of the biggest problems is theres just not enough support in schools. Do you have somebody telling you that youve got a different option . I did. But i feel like that can only affect a person so much. Like i agree with everything youre saying. But again, it depends on the person. Because even though people were telling me like i could do better, i could be in college, i could have a great job, there was a part of me that was like well i could do that or i could just get out here, make quick cash being a drug dealer or gang member, whatever. So it kind of depends on the person and what they want in life. How did you make the decision not to go that way . I made the choice because i got to see like the way i see it is a lot of kids in east oakland dont get to be in a professional environment and dont get to see that. So i was exposed to that and i realized being in a gang is not what i want to do. Id rather be able to work at a Google Office or Twitter Office or Something Like that. You said youve got a hustlers ambition. Yeah. That means i go get it. But youre here in school. Yeah. Im hustling. Thats hustling. I think a lot of people misunderstand the word hustling. They always put hustling into a street sense. But i feel like hustling can a lot of people on my block respect me because i go to school. You know what i mean . Because i mean, theres a lot being a gangster. But i can go and do it the street way, but i also am thug enough, you know thug life to go get it in the legal way. You know, just because i can. Because i have the mindset to do because i have the hustlers ambition to go get it. Like im going to go get my diploma, walk the stage. If i dont go get it i cant say too much. What do you think people who watch the news, they have an impression of oakland they have an impression of young people, especially people of color. What do they miss . What do they not know about you guys . Oaklands not a bad place. Very positive things. Youve got the they be dancing and stuff like that. Youve got a lot of rappers and stuff from oakland. Very positive people, creative. People of color are actually very intelligent and we actually have stuff going for us. You only see a certain like on the media well be on there if somebody gets killed or negative stuff happens but were actually doing a lot of positive things. Theres a lot of organizations that people at our school are part of that stand up against Police Brutality and stuff like that. I want to know that oakland youth, that were listening and were watching and were not just sitting here silently letting all these things happen to us. Were aware of the social pressures and the systems that are put up against us and that were fighting against them because theres so many seniors at my school its because we have senior projects, that were tackling issues in our communities. And there are a lot of students that are really passionate about these issues and going out and fighting and protesting, doing all of these things. So were not we are not the stereotypes. We are not just dumb kids sitting here buying guns, getting shot. Thats not us. We are fighting against these things. When you think about davon, what would be a good way to honor his memory, do you think . Just keep his name alive and stay positive. And try to do you know, go to college because i know thats something he would do. Go to school and be successful. Just stay in school. And joining me now to discuss whats happening on the streets and how best to respond are Marian Castelluccio dominican sister of adrian michigan and Mentality Health director of Catholic Charities of the east bay. Olis simmons, ceo of youth uprising in oakland. And ryan smith, executive director of the Education Trust west. Theyre an advocacy group. Welcome to all of you. So glad youre all here. Thank you. We just heard from these incredibly articulate, smart, thoughtful people. They talked about guns and jobs and race and police. What stood out for you . What really jumped out as something that struck you . You know, the thing that jumped out is the contradiction in these young people. They are extraordinary. But theyre also ordinary. I mean this is the typical young person in oakland. And its extraordinary because people have a very different impression of our young people. And i think anybody who had a lower expectation shame on you. I think these young people are very much typical. Its interesting the young man who said, you know, id celebrate if i get to 22. Michael. Yes michael. I have a birthday coming up. I remember actually becoming 23, 24 and a lot of the young men and myself saying, wow, we made it. And that being an indicator of success for young black men. And the sad thing is if you look at young black and brown men if we talk about the context, young black and brown men are overrepresented in every indicator connected to failure and underrepresented in every indicator connected to success. If thats not a call to action what is . And what is do people sort of live down to expectations as well as rising up to expectations . I dont please. I think the video the young people shared with us the fact that they do have high expectations. Thats right. And whats happening is were failing them were not putting if i could make more selling drugs on the corner and supporting myself and nobodys helping me get a job, and they have high expectations, and were not putting the Resources Available to them for them to meet those expectations. Frankly i thought the young people were brilliant in their enumeration of the issues. The nra wants to take on gun control as an issue. But when young people talk about the very real impact on their lives and their communities, their sense of hope and possibility, you have to hear that. And then talking about theres not enough support in schools, we absolutely need jobs, like these are the core issues. We want to talk about what theyve done and not done. But the truth is theyve inherited adult failure. Lets talk about the schools. And of course ryan thats your area in particular. But all of you really touch upon the schools. In oakland 80 of the students are either esl, english as a second language, theyre low income, or theyre in foster care. Any one of those things presents a whole host of challenges. But when you ask the schools to deal with all of those things and teach you know, reading, writing, math how do you help the schools to succeed . I mean, thats the challenge. I was thinking about the youth. Not only are they brilliant theyre dealing with the trauma of seeing their cousins pass away. Theyre dealing with believing they wont graduate. And that does set the context in oakland. Only 50 of young black men actually graduate from high school. I mean if you take that in the california context, out of 1 out of every 20 black kindergartners will only graduate high school and go to college. Thats 5 of black youth in california. We have to do more in partnerships with our schools. Educators are doing as much as possible, but we also need to wrap our arms around schools. Theres a lot of great Wraparound Support Services that are happening. Theres an Amazing Initiative around young black and brown men of color thats been rolled out not only in oakland, in other cities. But more must be done. You know if you think about the failure and how many schools fail if it were a fire department, Health Clinics had that rate of failure, that wouldnt be acceptable. Why is it acceptable with schools . You know its funny. I think that people the same thing with violence. They feel like its not my problem, violence is not my problem, unemployments not my problem. And i dont know that medium fully have embraced the reality that were indivisible as a nation, that we absolutely are going to sink or swim together. And the success of those students is the responsibility of all of us. And so how can we create School Cultures that dont use punitive one of the things were in the west Contra Costa County schools, and were enabling them to change their Corporate School culture. Say what that is restorative practice. Restorative practice is focused on the relationship. So rather than being punitive in the relationship, so were going to expel you, zero tolerance in these schools for these 20 things, and were just going to get rid of you, we get rid of you and then we dont have a problem, youre somebody elses problem. The restorative practice is to sustain and develop the relationship so that how do you resolve things without the punitive disciplinary thing . It takes the whole school. Its a twoyear process. When you say the whole school, do you mean literally everybody . The principal, the teachers, the students, the custodial staff. The custodial staff. The ladies in the cafeteria. It takes everybody buying into the fact that there is another way to resolve differences and that to acknowledge that the impact and wa people arehat people are dealing with and sometimes what we call acting out, theyre just dealing with trauma. If i come to School Monday morning and my best friends been murdered and im going to go through the school day then im going to be expelled before youre going to be acting out. Youre going to be acting out. Whereas when you develop a restorative practice capacity within the school they do a checkin on monday mornings. They find out that this has happened. Then they give emotional support to the students and they dont get expelled. You can do only so much i would think if you start in the high schools. I mean you really have to begin when kids are born, right . Absolutely. Brain developments really clear. If you begin at six weeks or before, so for children that are living in poor neighborhoods, they hear 30 Million Words less than children living in affluent neighborhoods. And those arent 30 million unique words. Theyre just 30 Million Words. And thats why . Because People Living in poor communities have not been socialized or trained or supported because theyve got the stress of can i keep my energy bill on, how am i going to pay the rent, how am i going to get my kids to school. To spend that really critical time singing, reading, talking to your children. And the brain starts to develop very very early. At a certain point if youve not stimulated the brain in a certain kind of way youve missed the opportunity to do that pretty much forever. The really great thing is i know we can talk about failure but theres a lot of promising practice happening in our communities as well. I had the opportunity to sit down with chris chapman, whos the executive director of the africanamerican initiative within oakland unified. And when he talked about the young black men he worked with, he talked about them as kings. Kings in our community. That we need to take care of kindergarten through high school and through college. And thats really a cultural shift. You know davon isnt doesnt exist in a vacuum. You can go to oakland. You can go to baltimore. You can go to brooklyn. Or you can go to south los angeles. And we see the same story. So its really not just about whats happening with schools. Its about awakening our collective consciousness to know that this is a tragedy that we no longer can tolerate. Marian, what do you say to a mother and a father, a family that loses somebody whos 14 years old . What do you tell them . I think the first thing we do is we receive their story. We honor their story. We dont come in with an easy answer. So people sometimes people come in with easy answers and say its going to be okay, this is going to go away. Its not going to go away. So they have what we do in response to the Crisis Response that we do walking with families who have had a loved one murdered in the steve oakland, we sit down and were real. First of all, we dont come in with paper. We come in and we receive their stories as many times as they need to tell us their story. And we honor that. And i say, i didnt get a chance to know your child. What kind of a baby how did that person sleep during the night . And we receive that story. And we companion them. So we dont say to you do you want to have therapy because people are going to say i dont want a therapist right now, ive got to take care of my pg e bill i used my rent money for the funeral, all those kinds of things. So what we do with them is we companion them, we help take care of the environmental things so that at some point they can grieve. So its giving them respect. Were giving them respect. We walk as a compassionate presence. We say when everybody else gets settled down were going to be with you. Well walk with you into next year. Youre a woman of faith. Yes. How do you answer questions like how could god let this happen to my child . My response is thats not who my god is. My response is who is god for you . First of all, who is god for you . Would your god do this . I think this is weve missed the mark in supporting our kids. Weve missed the mark in our humanness. And therefore thats what caused this. You cant lay this at the feet of god. At the same time god can be your strength and companion you through this process so that well hold the hope until you can hold the hope for yourself. You know, oakland is a city with many churches. Many black churches. Have they failed young people . I think thats tough. I think its a hard thing to blame the black church. When we tell the truth about these problems, and these problems, the murder of a young black man is not just connected from the quality of education quality of house, the quality of Early Education the access for them in the future in their families right now to employment. Meaningful familysustaining employment. And in that context you cant possibly blame the black church. You cant blame the family. You have to say that we have a collective responsibility. Does the church need to do more or do Something Different . All of us need to do more. Exactly. We cant start to point at institutions here and there. First of all, i think the black church has been the cornerstone of the community. Many parts of the community together. But this is really a systemic issue. We cant just look at oakland in a vacuum. We have to look at the systems that continually disenfranchise young men like davon and young women as well. Until we Start Talking about Structural Racism until we start to talk about the impact of unemployment in our communities, until we start addressing the big issues we cant look at smaller institutions and okay. And it was the churches in the city of oakland that got the city center and got 3,000 people down there to address and hold the city council and the mayor accountable to what they said. It was the churches. So Oakland Community organizations. So its interesting. Because were talking about churches, but do you know that in oakland only 16 of oakland teachers think theres a meaningful relationship between schools and Law Enforcement . When we talk about what does that mean a meaningful relationship . Meaning they feel like theyre partnering in a productive way with those that are supposed to protect and serve. Let me ask you about that. Because one of the things that stands out when you look at the statistics is how many unsolved murders there are in oakland. Yeah. Talk about that. What is how does that connects with this lack of trust that the police have or the community has with the police . I mean two things. One is that theres an inverse relationship between crime and education. When young people are not in school and not productively engaged in moving toward a career theres a very clear correlation between an increase in crime. So lets say theres a connection. But the other thing to say is police come after a crime has been committed, right . Safety happens between neighbors. Safety happens between homeowners and storekeepers and families. And people often know whos committed a crime but if you dont trust the police youre not going to tell them. So ive spent a lot of time building a relationship saying weve got to build Police Command relations. People dont trust you. And i should say we did invite the Oakland Police department to come on the show and they declined. Same with the schools actually. So is there change happening between the police and the community . Oakland . I think so. I think its slow. I think the new leadership is very promising. I like the new chief. Hes young. He is social justiceminded as a police chief. But i think pthat the legacy of the department is powerful. The distrust and disdain that people hold is going to take a long time. Because if youve not been right by me for generations, im not going to trust you quickly. Marian . And i also think the Community Policing the neighborhood, the neighborhood watches that are being set up and having the Community Police officer present in that kind of a thing, and weve also had a number of things events like a memorial that kind of thing, where some Police Officers have showed up not in their uniform, simply as a person who cares in this community. We can develop that. But everything you said is just right on. When youve got this legacy of mistrust, its not going to go away in a blink. And yet were work on it. Ill just build upon what marian was saying. Not only is it about, you know the legacy but actually talking about it. Actually addressing it. Having a dialogue about whats happened in the past. We can bring on new leader after new leader. And i wish the new leadership well. But until we talk about whats happened in the past and what people feel, the trust, the mistrust over decades will never actually get to the root cause. Recently of course were having a National Conversation about a lot of these things. Race and policing. And you met with the attorney general eric holder when he was in town recently. What did you hear from him . I heard that as he exits out hes inviting the citizens and leaders in oakland to take on their responsibility to be in meaningful, productive relationship with each other towards solving these problems. And i want to say that yes the churches, yes the police, yes service providers, yes all of that. But ultimately there is a responsibility from our corporate citizens to be very much active. Join a board, donate money, create a job. Get involved. Get involved. This isnt a siloed problem. This is everybodys problem. And these are all our children. So it doesnt make any difference if i dont live in east oakland or not. These are our children. This is our future. We owe it to them. So if you live in the piedmont area or you live someplace outside of that, this is your problem because these are our children. Yeah. And theyre our future. You heard those children saying were not stupid sitting here theyre paying attention. Were paying attention and were expecting you to show up at the table and be supportive of us. Yeah. We have im sorry. We have just a very short time left. A minute. Each of you, really quickly, what gives you hope for what youre seeing now . Ryan. What gives me hope is not only are children brilliant but were beginning to see efforts to really engage them more. I think youth force is very powerful. So instead of doing change silently, alone in a silo we need to do it with youth and community. I think thats very important. Marian, ill let you. What gives me hope is something ryan said. The Community Policing, the relationships and stuff. Its been the elephant in the room. And now were talking about it. Its out here. Its out in the front. It can be addressed. We can work on it together. The more things we put out front and not be the elephant in the room, the better chance we have. What gives me hope is the emerging National Dialogue about equity as the Growth Strategy to say that as a nation we have to be more equitable. This isnt about what happens in one neighborhood. This is what we do collectively. Thank you all the very much. I want to clarify one thing. We didnt invite the schools to be on. We did invite the Oakland Police department and they declined to be on. Thank you very much. And lots of luck and tnds great work. Thank you. That is it for tonight. And for all of kqeds News Coverage please go to kqednews. Org. Im scott schafer. Thanks so much for joining us tonight. Good night. Captioning sponsored by wnet sreenivasan on this edition for sunday, march 8 the latest from baghdad as iraqi forces launch an offensive against isis. Why the director of the c. I. A. Plans to restructure the agency. And, in our signature segment, the increasingly tense climate for muslims in frances most diverse city. translated its getting worse and worse. And frankly, i dont think its going to get better. Sreenivasan next, on pbs newshour weekend. Pbs newshour weekend is made possible by